Some of you can barely take Lena Dunham for 25 minutes on her show, but you people can suck it. Here she is for a whole hour talking about eBay, Lilith Fair, Girls backlash, getting fired, her Vogue photos, her favorite blog, the paucity of female showrunners and oh so much more. Enjoy. (via: TOH)
HBO sent out this look inside last night’s terrific episode of True Detective as the show’s creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto talks about the literary inspiration for the mysterious “Yellow King.”
Check it out along with a couple of other scenes from last night’s 5th episode “The Secret Fate of All Life” after the jump.
I haven’t decided yet if I like Netflix’s model of dropping an entire series in your lap all at once and giving you the option of whether to binge or not to binge. Call me old fashioned, but I still really like appointment television where everyone gathers around a single hour or half hour and either talks about it on social media as it happens or the next day with friends or coworkers who saw the same thing. With shows like House of Cards or Orange is the New Black, there’s an orgy of attention the weekend the series premieres, but then it drops off dramatically. Picking up a show in the weeks following its debut, the buzz is diffused and sporadic. Sure it’s great to be in control of our own viewing and moving on to the next episode whenever you feel like it, but if you don’t do it right away, you might be doing it all alone. Of course, if you don’t care about the social component of watching TV, then this is the way to go.
Me? I couldn’t help myself and motored through the entire second season of House of Cards over the course of about 72 hours. The question now is how to write about it. Should I go episode by episode for those who haven’t started or haven’t finished? By then it seems like those who binge watched will have moved on to something else. I don’t know, but in the interest of surfing the buzz while it’s fresh, here for now is my look back at the first season and a spoiler-free overview and opinion of season two.
While you binge watch House of Cards, just a little teaser from your friends at Netflix to remind you they have more than one show.
Check it out after the jump
Speaking before the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously called television a “vast wasteland.” As a commercial medium, television was only in its 20th year at that point and it consisted of three national networks that didn’t even broadcast 24 hours a day. Today of course there are hundreds of channels delivering content over the airwaves, along cable lines, via satellite and across the internet. Minow wouldn’t recognize today’s landscape, but would he still consider it a wasteland?
The interesting thing is that over the years, and especially in the last 20, the fragmentation of the TV audience has led to both an increase and a decrease in quality. Instead of having to appeal to a mass audience in a gigantic middle of the road, programmers carve out niches that can pander to the lowest common denominator or cater to those of us looking for something closer to high art. Between those two extremes, there are seemingly endless permutations. With DVDs and internet streaming, TV series no longer need to be stretched out to a magic number of 100 episodes so they can be packaged and resold as reruns to make a profit. With older episodes of many shows available on demand, a series can spin complex, connected storylines without having to worry about alienating new viewers. As a result, a good series can take on the richness and depth and nuance of a great novel.
If Minow turned on his television set today, he’d find on one hand absolute bottom of the barrel reality shows like Duck Dynasty, Keeping up with the Kardashians or Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. On the other, he’d find sublime entertainments like Breaking Bad or True Detective. There’s something for every taste and a surprising amount of it is very good. Some still call it the Boob Tube, but TV no longer cultivates an audience of boobs nor are its sets made up of vacuum tubes. Once a distant bastard cousin of movies, television today is where the most interesting things are happening.
With that in mind, let this be the beginning of an expanded focus on television from Awards Daily. I’m Craig Kennedy and for the time being I’ll be your cruise director. Going forward, the shape and content of the coverage will be a work in progress. Does the world really need another show recap? I don’t know, but there’s more to watch than ever before and a lot of it deserves a bigger audience than it’s getting. At the very least, I hope to be of service in picking the gems out of the muck. For example, have you checked out Broad City on Comedy Central yet? You should. Are you jazzed for the upcoming 2nd season of Hannibal on NBC? I recommend it.
Drop me a line (craig@awardsdaily.com) and let me know what you’re interested in talking about when it comes to the small screen. I can’t watch and write about everything, but over time new voices will be added to the mix. I look forward to this turning into a vibrant community of lovers of good television. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go binge watch the 2nd season of House of Cards on Netflix.